3 Ways to Leverage UGC in Your Marketing Efforts

Sven Tarantik, TurnTo

Author Bio

Sven is the VP of Marketing at TurnTo Networks and responsible for the overall leadership and management of TurnTo's marketing programs, including demand generation, strategic marketing and brand communications. Sven spent the last 17 years in a variety of marketing roles leveraging the digital capabilities of some of the nation's largest retailers before pivoting to the solutions side of the industry. Prior to joining TurnTo, Sven served as VP of Marketing Strategy at Oracle Data Cloud.

The landscape for consumer content has shifted massively in the last decade. Mobile devices finally beat out desktops as the primary way most people access the internet, and in an age of ubiquitous cameras, visual content has eclipsed text as the main way people express themselves online. Meanwhile, text messaging trained us to prefer briefer communications, and the rise of social media led us to value two-way interactivity over passive content consumption.

But traditional product ratings and reviews haven’t changed to meet these new consumer expectations. They’re still important, but they’re no longer enough. Creating content to match these needs can quickly take a toll on your marketing team, but luckily you don’t have to do all the work. User-generated content (UGC) can be a powerful signifier of consumer trust in your brand and is a cost-effective way to support your marketing and advertising efforts. Here are three ways TurnTo and Bronto can help you take advantage of this valuable marketing resource.

Create a Community

To increase relevancy in this changing consumer environment, TurnTo introduced Community Q&A based on its proprietary Active Outreach™ model. This enables shoppers to ask – and past buyers to answer – questions about your brand’s products. Community Q&A combines the wisdom of your customers and internal experts with existing content to answer shoppers’ questions fast.

Enabling this authentic dialogue between shoppers and customers right on product pages increases conversion rates, generates fresh UGC for SEO, builds customer loyalty and reduces call center load. Thanks to TurnTo’s integration with the Bronto Marketing Platform, you can use this behavioral data to build more targeted and personalized email and cross-channel marketing campaigns. For instance, use the Direct Add image tag to automatically pass information about Community Q&A engagers, including email address and contact field information, to one or more lists in Bronto.

The Direct Add pixel uses the list ID, which can be found at the bottom righthand corner of the screen when viewing the newly created list(s).

Help Shoppers Visualize Your Products

With competition at an all-time high, it’s important to ensure your products stand out and to portray your business as a helpful support network. TurnTo offers Visual Reviews™, which enables shoppers to add photos and videos; and Checkout Comments™, which collects customer content at the moment of sale.

Adding the option of Visual Reviews™ has been shown to increase customer response by 56%. And with Checkout Comments™, you’ll add a source of concise, positive UGC that vastly improves your customers’ online experience.

Review Your Marketing Efforts

Utilizing TurnTo’s Ratings & Reviews app in Bronto allows you to send personalized “Do More” requests to increase review volume by 20-30%. These “Amazon-style” emails more than double response rates and work on all email clients. Advanced logic ensures you ask about the right products at the right time.

Incorporating calls for this type of UGC will allow you to provide connections to people with direct product experience (often lacking in traditional social networks).

These strategies are an easy and effective way to strengthen loyalty with your current customers while offering value to prospective shoppers. To learn more about incorporating UGC into your marketing strategy in Bronto, visit the TurnTo partner page in the AppCenter.